Boss Beauchamp did not like to be interrupted when eating his breakfast, so he was more than a little annoyed when his foreman showed up at the back door of the sprawling ranch house at the foot of Blackjack Mountain. Mike Strong knew better than to disturb his employer during a meal, but he thought that Boss would want to be told about the problem he was faced with right away. Leon Smith was lying in the bunkhouse with two bullet holes in his back, and he needed to see the doctor soon, because he didn’t look as though he was going to make it.
That wasn’t the worst of it. Shorty Doyle didn’t come back from that little party he and Leon and Sid Hadley were supposed to pull off last night. Boss was short of patience when his orders were not followed, and Strong knew he was going to hit the ceiling when he found out about Shorty. Sid should have known Boss would raise hell with him for leaving Shorty’s body on McAllister’s property, but he didn’t think about anybody’s hide but his own. And now it was Strong’s job to tell Beauchamp about the fouled-up raid on McAllister’s cattle. He could hear him cursing Lena as he pushed his chair back from the dining room table. Strong unconsciously took a couple of steps back from the kitchen steps in anticipation of his employer’s arrival.
“Mike,” Beauchamp roared, “what is so all-fired important that it can’t wait till I’ve had a decent amount of time to drink my coffee?”
“There’s a little problem with some of the men,” Strong started, but got no further before Beauchamp interrupted.
“I believe that’s what I hired you for, isn’t it—to take care of any problems with the men?”
“Yes, sir,” Strong replied meekly. “And I reckon I do a pretty good job for you. But this is somethin’ I think you’d wanna know right off, and that’s the only reason I disturbed your breakfast.”
“All right,” Beauchamp said. “Make it quick. I need to be at my office at the mine. I’ve got idiots working there that might blow up the place if I’m not there to tell them what to do.”
“Yes, sir,” Strong said. He went on then to relate the mishap that was supposed to be another step in the plan to force Boone McAllister to give up and move out. Beauchamp listened without interrupting, although it was apparent by the tightening of his expression that he was approaching a state of unbridled fury. Still he said nothing until Strong finished up with “I figured it best to check with you before I sent for the doctor to come look at Leon.”
“It’s a good thing you did, you damn fool,” Beauchamp roared. “I don’t want the doctor to know Leon’s getting shot has anything to do with me. I can’t have him coming out to my ranch to tend to somebody who got shot on McAllister’s place.”
It irritated him even more to have to explain something so simple to his foreman. He paid his men good money to do what he asked without question and have enough sense to keep their mouths shut about it.
“Yes, sir,” Strong said. “Whaddaya want me to do about Leon?”
“The same thing you do when a horse goes lame,” Beauchamp replied coldly. Realizing then that he might have been a little too blunt, he softened his order a bit. “Let Fuzzy take a look at him and see if he thinks Leon’s going to pull through it. Then we’ll see. It might be the humane thing to put him out of his misery if he’s headed that way anyway. The damn doctor couldn’t do much more than that.”
“Yes, sir, I’ll go tell Fuzzy.”
“Then bring Sid back here,” Beauchamp ordered. “I want to talk to him.”
• • •
After Strong went to the cookhouse to find Fuzzy Chapman, he walked with him to the bunkhouse, where Leon still lay in the same blood-soaked quilt that had been placed on him the night before.
“Boss says to see what you can do to fix him up,” he told the cook.
“I’ll take another look at him,” Fuzzy said, “but he don’t look much better’n he did last night.”
“See what you think,” Strong told him. “Let me know when I get back.” He took a moment to stare at the pitiful man, lying helplessly on his bunk, clutching the quilt in pain. “It’s a damn wonder he made it back at all,” was Strong’s final comment before turning away.
Breakfast was long since finished, but two of the hands were still sitting at the table at the end of the building, drinking coffee. One of them was Sid Hadley, still wearing a large swollen cut on his right cheekbone, the result of a barroom confrontation at the Silver Dollar Saloon.
“Come on, Sid,” Strong said. “Boss wants to see you.”
At once wary, Sid replied, “What’s he want with me? Ain’t nothin’ I could do ’bout Leon gettin’ shot.”
“I reckon Boss will tell you,” Strong responded impatiently. “Now get up outta that chair before I decide to kick your ass all the way over to the house.”
• • •
Lena Three Toe opened the kitchen door and stood back to let the two men inside. “Mr. Beauchamp’s in the dining room, waiting for you.”
As Hadley passed by her, she reached out and slapped him on the back of his head. “Take your hat off when you come in this house,” she snapped.
“Yes’m,” Sid replied meekly, and removed it at once, even as he cursed her under his breath. There was no love lost between Beauchamp’s hired guns and his prickly tempered housekeeper. Boss set himself up as a king in his house and Lena conducted herself as the queen. To the people in town, she was perceived as Beauchamp’s Indian cook and housekeeper, but the men he hired to do his evil work knew that she performed other functions that Boss preferred to keep to himself.
With an ambitious eye for the future, he concentrated his attention at the present on the building of a financial empire, without regard for anyone who stood in his way. And that certainly included the likes of Boone McAllister, who somehow had acquired the papers for the mountain that stood between Beauchamp and the city proper of Silver City. When he was finished, Boss Beauchamp intended to have Silver City named the capital of Idaho Territory, with himself as governor. He intended to buy it, if possible, steal it if that wasn’t successful, or kill for it if that was necessary.
Lena followed the two men into the dining room, where Beauchamp was seated, drinking coffee.
“You want some more coffee?” she asked.
When he nodded, she left to fetch the pot. In a minute, she was back to fill his cup. Then she returned to the kitchen. There was no offer of coffee for the two hired hands, who stood quietly waiting for Beauchamp to speak. He made them stand and fidget for a long moment before he acknowledged their presence. When he did, it was in the form of a piercing stare that Sid Hadley could almost feel scorching his skin.
When he finally spoke, it was as disconcerting as Sid had expected. Directed squarely at him, Beauchamp uttered a question, his voice approaching a growl.
“You left one of my men on McAllister property?”
Sid was afraid to answer, but knew he had little choice. “Well, yessir,” he stumbled. “That there’s the way it turned out, but there wasn’t nothin’ I could do about that. They was waitin’ for us. We didn’t have a chance. They was all around that pasture. There musta been a dozen of ’em, and we didn’t have no choice but to get outta there. I thought Leon and Shorty were comin’ right behind me. I didn’t know both of ’em got shot. If I’da known Shorty was knocked off his horse, why, I’da gone right back to get him.”
He stood there nervously shifting back and forth from one foot to the other, waiting for Beauchamp’s reaction.
“You make me sick,” Beauchamp snarled. “You ran like a yellow-livered coward. What do you think people will say if they find out Shorty worked for me?”
“Oh no, sir, Mr. Beauchamp, don’t nobody know Shorty worked for you. There wouldn’t be no way of knowin’ who he worked for,” Sid pleaded. “But there was just too many of ’em for us to handle.”
“How do you know how many there were?” Beauchamp demanded.
It was of critical importance to him to know if McAllister had, in fact, hired on some extra hands. If he had, he might find himself in a full range war, something he wished to avoid.
“Well, sir, it was dark, so I couldn’t count the exact number, but the shots was comin’ from everywhere. But I know for a fact that he hired on some men. I was in town when some of ’em came through the other day.” He unconsciously reached up to gingerly touch the cut on his cheekbone. “They was lookin’ for McAllister’s place. A couple of ’em came in the Silver Dollar where me and Leon was havin’ a drink before we rode back to the ranch. We got into it a little bit till one of ’em snuck behind me and cracked me with his rifle barrel. And I’ll tell you the truth, he was a hired gun, if I ever saw one.” He paused to take a breath, but continued when Beauchamp appeared to be taking him seriously. “And I’ll tell you another thing. When we rode into that pasture last night, there was a helluva lot more horses grazin’ there than there was the last time we was up there.”
Beauchamp was beginning to feel real concern by then. “Are you telling me you actually saw more horses, or are you just trying to cover your ass for running away?”
“No, sir,” Sid insisted as earnestly as he could manage. “I’m tellin’ you that McAllister never had more than three horses that I ever saw up there. And last night there was at least fifteen or sixteen in that bunch with the cows.”
“That damn gimp-legged son of a bitch,” Beauchamp snarled. “Where’d he get the money to hire on a bunch of gunmen?”
He paused to think about Boone McAllister’s tiny one-man operation. He felt sure he would scare him off when he hired two men to work for him, and Strong, with two of the men, paid them a visit. Now he found out that instead of running, McAllister hired on a crew.
“He must be pulling some real pay dirt out of that mine of his.”
It was confirmation of what he had already suspected, and made him even more desperate to get his hands on that property.
Maybe I’m going to need more men, he thought.
He decided that the important thing to do next was to find out exactly how many men McAllister had. With Shorty dead, and Leon probably so, Beauchamp was down to thirteen men who had been hired specifically for their guns.
“All right,” he finally ordered, “get out of here. I’ve got to go into town. Strong, have one of the men saddle my horse.” He cast another seething look at Sid. “Maybe he can do it without fouling up. And, Strong, see what Fuzzy says about Leon. You know what to do.”
The two men split up, Sid on his way to the barn and Strong headed back to the bunkhouse. When he arrived, Fuzzy was still bending over Leon, trying to clean him up a little. When he saw Strong walk in, he straightened up and signaled the foreman with a slow shake of his head. Strong understood.
“Done about all I can do for him,” Fuzzy said. “I was just tryin’ to make him a little more comfortable.”
“All right, Fuzzy,” Strong said. “I reckon you’d best get back to your work.” He waited until the cook walked out the door before going over beside Leon’s bunk to look at him. “How ya doin’, partner?” Strong asked compassionately.
Leon’s eyes blinked painfully as he looked up at Strong. “I been better,” he rasped between lips crusted with blood that Fuzzy had been unsuccessful in cleaning up. “I need to see the doctor,” he pleaded, his voice barely above a whisper.
“Right you are,” Strong said. “And that’s exactly what we’re fixin’ to do, so you just rest easy now. You’ll feel better when the doctor sees you.” Leon closed his eyes and relaxed a little. He was too weak from the loss of blood to put up much resistance when Strong suddenly grabbed him by the throat and clamped down on his windpipe. Leon put up as much effort to survive as he could, but Strong was a big man, and his hands were like two large vises as he increased the pressure on the helpless man’s throat. He held on to the doomed man long after Leon’s weak but desperate flailing of his arms and legs ceased and death came to claim him.
When he was sure Leon was gone for good, Strong walked outside, where he spotted two of the men near the barn.
“Jim,” he called out, “you and Sledge get yourself a couple of shovels. Poor ol’ Leon didn’t make it, so I reckon you’d best carry him over beyond the hill and dig him a grave.”
When Sid came out of the barn then, leading Beauchamp’s horse, Strong walked over to intercept him.
“I heard what you told ’em,” Sid said. “So ol’ Leon went under. Nothin’ much a body can do about it when his number’s up, I reckon.”
Strong took the reins from him and said, “That’s a fact. Go get yourself a pick and help them bury him.” Then he led the horse up to the kitchen door and knocked. When Lena opened the door, he said, “Tell Mr. Beauchamp that Leon Smith passed away, and I’ll tie his horse at the hitchin’ post out front.”
• • •
Jake Tully looked up from behind the bar where he was rinsing some shot glasses in a bucket of water, surprised to see Ronald Beauchamp at this early hour of the day. Boss Beauchamp visited the Silver Dollar occasionally, but usually to have a drink later in the day, after he left his office at Beauchamp No. 2.
“Well, good mornin’, Mr. Beauchamp,” he greeted him. “Don’t normally see you in here this time of day. What can I get you?”
Jake didn’t count himself as one of Beauchamp’s admirers, but he was smart enough to know he had to respect the man’s power.
“Tully,” Beauchamp acknowledged. “I don’t need a drink right now. I just want a little information.” He didn’t waste any time getting to the point. “I understand a couple of my men got into a little disagreement in here a few days ago, and I just wanted to check with you to see if there was any damage done to your saloon that maybe I should take care of.”
That’ll be the day, Jake thought. He was sure he already knew what Beauchamp really wanted to know. He had talked to Toby Bryan, the blacksmith, and they were sure there was going to be trouble with another McAllister in town.
“Well, now,” he replied, “that’s mighty generous of you to offer, but there was no damage to anything. There was a pretty bad-lookin’ bump on the side of Sid Hadley’s face, but no harm done to the saloon.”
“Well, I don’t want my men causing any trouble in town,” Beauchamp continued. “Just a little barroom fight between my men and some of the miners around town, I reckon.”
Now you’re getting down to it, Jake thought, so I’ll tell you what you really want to know. “No, sir, your boys—really was only Hadley—got into it with a couple of strangers, just come to town. The feller that laid Sid out cold said his name was McAllister, and said he was Boone McAllister’s brother. I don’t know who his friend is.”
Beauchamp didn’t reply for a second or two, his face expressionless, and his eyes locked unblinking on Jake’s. “There was just the two of them? Nobody else with them?”
“That I can’t say,” Jake replied, although he knew. “It was only the two of ’em that came in here.”
Beauchamp paused again to think about it. “Well, like I said, I just wanted to make sure my boys didn’t do any damage in here.” He turned abruptly and made for the door.
“Good day to ya,” Jake called after him, a sly smile on his face. There’ll be hell to pay for somebody, he thought.
It was not a secret that there was bad blood between Beauchamp and McAllister, and it would be only a matter of time before somebody ended up getting shot. Jake, like other honest businessmen in town, had no notion of the war going on between Beauchamp and McAllister.
• • •
Sheriff Jim Crowder quickly put his coffee cup on the shelf behind his desk when he glanced out the window and saw Boss Beauchamp striding across the street toward his office. Hurriedly getting to his feet, he moved to open the door.
“Good mornin’, Mr. Beauchamp,” he said.
“It’s afternoon,” Beauchamp replied curtly. “What do you know about McAllister’s brother coming through town?”
“Yes, sir,” Crowder said, “I heard he was in town the other day.”
“Why didn’t you let me know?” Beauchamp demanded. “How many men did he have with him?”
“I didn’t have any idea you’d wanna know. It was just him and another feller, an Injun, a woman, and a young girl. That’s what Toby Bryan told me. I didn’t even see ’em. He said they drove a small herd of horses with ’em—left ’em to graze behind Toby’s forge while they went in the saloon. You know I’da sent somebody to tell you if I’d thought you wanted to know.”
Beauchamp’s mind was spinning, at first with disgust for the report Sid Hadley had given him of a dozen or more gun hands, but then it struck him that the opportunity to drive McAllister out for good might not be slipping away after all.
“Three men—one of them an Indian—and two females, eh?” Hadley had him thinking he was going to hire on more gun hands to combat the crew McAllister had brought in.
“That’s what Toby said,” Crowder replied.
Three men were not enough to concern Beauchamp since he still had an advantage in numbers, and his men were all hardened gunmen. But what if these new arrivals were only the first to show up? What if McAllister was planning to bring in more men, preparing for an all-out war? He rapidly came to the conclusion that, if he was going to drive McAllister off that mountain, it needed to be done before McAllister had a chance to further strengthen his hand. Beauchamp’s mind began working on a plan to get rid of his nemesis for good and all.
“You know,” he told Crowder, “something’s going to have to be done about McAllister stealing cattle off my range. I’ve stood it for as long as I intend to, and I might have to do something about it. I’ve gone out of my way to try to be neighborly with him, but he just doesn’t want any part of it. So the next time I catch him rustling my cattle, I’m going to have to take matters into my own hands.”
“You want me to ride out there and talk to McAllister about this?” Crowder asked.
“I don’t know if it would do any good,” Beauchamp replied. “A man like that doesn’t have much respect for the law. It might be best to just let me handle it. Maybe McAllister and I can have a little talk and settle our differences.”
“Yes, sir,” Crowder said, relieved to have an out. “You’re probably right about that. He oughta have enough sense to know he can’t go up against your boys.”
“We don’t have any room for troublemakers like Boone McAllister in our town, and I’m willing to stand up against his kind, for the good of Silver City. I’ll see what I can do to settle this thing peacefully, but I’ll fight if I’m forced to.”
“Yes, sir,” Crowder replied. “No man could fault you for that. Maybe I should ride out to his place with you, though.”
“It’s your job to keep the peace here in town. Best let me handle the rustling problem.”
“Right,” Crowder said with relief. “You know best. I’ll keep an eye on his crew if they show up in town again.”
Beauchamp left the sheriff’s office satisfied that he was free to get rid of Boone McAllister, the thorn in the side of his plans, for good and all. He felt secure in the thought that Jim Crowder would testify that he was within his rights to protect his cattle from being rustled. There was no one else to prove his accusations false.
He almost laughed when he thought about the opposition he was preparing to face, if he was quick to act: two white men, one Indian, and two females, maybe three if McAllister’s Shoshoni woman was to be counted. There was no longer a question of frightening the obstinate squatter to pack up and leave. Now it was war, and he intended to wipe them all off the face of the earth.
No reason to wait another day, he thought. Then he cautioned himself not to act too soon. It wouldn’t hurt his cause to let the sheriff think he was trying to settle the problem peacefully.
Two days, he decided. You’ve got two days, McAllister.
• • •
Unaware that all hell was about to come down upon them, the brothers McAllister made their plans to protect themselves. They had decided there was no way they could definitely say that the dead man lying at the foot of the north meadow was on Beauchamp’s payroll, or that he had acted on Beauchamp’s orders. Consequently, they decided that they could expect a continuation of the harassing raids on the cattle and the mine.
Joel was in favor of carrying the battle to Beauchamp, but Boone argued that he wanted to build a solid future in Silver City. And while it was legal in the eyes of the law to defend one’s property, the army and the U.S. Marshals Service might come down hard on both sides of a range war. Finally he persuaded Joel that it was best to continue to maintain a defensive position and hope to demonstrate to Beauchamp that the McAllisters were here to stay.
“If he keeps losing a man or two every time he sends one of his little raiding parties over here, he’s gonna have to give up eventually.”
“What if he gets tired of sending two or three men to pick away at us?” Joel asked. “What if he decides to storm over here one night with all his men, hopin’ to rub us all out at once?”
“I don’t think even Beauchamp has that much brass,” Boone said. “Hell, he’s tryin’ to take control of the whole town. How would it look to everybody if he murdered us all?”
“Maybe you’re right,” Joel said. “You were always smarter than me. At least, you always thought you were.” He chuckled at his attempt at humor. “I’m thinkin’ I might ride into town, tomorrow or the next day, and see if the sheriff knows what’s goin’ on out here.”
“Suit yourself, but remember I told you Beauchamp is the one who put that dumb bastard in the sheriff’s office in the first place.”
• • •
Lena Three Toe led Mike Strong into the parlor where Boss Beauchamp was waiting.
“You wanted to see me, Mr. Beauchamp?” Strong asked.
Beauchamp nodded toward a chair. “Sit down, Mike. I want to have a little talk.”
“Yes, sir,” he responded, and dutifully seated himself on a straight-back chair opposite his boss. He was not totally at ease with the situation, because Boss never invited any of the men to sit down with him, so he wondered what trouble he had gotten himself into.
“I think it’s time I found out if you and your men are worth the money I pay you. Up till now you’ll have to admit that you haven’t had to do a helluva lot to earn it.”
“No, sir,” Strong replied, thinking that he was about to get a cut in pay.
“Well,” Beauchamp went on, “I’m going to give you and every one of your boys a chance to earn a bonus of a hundred dollars if you successfully do the job I’ve got in mind.”
Strong’s expression of concern was immediately replaced with one of enthusiasm. “We’re ready to do whatever job you’ve got in mind,” he assured his boss.
He had no concerns regarding the nature of the job, assuming it had to do with killing someone. For that was the primary reason he and every one of his men were on the payroll. They were all wanted men in different states or territories, and not a man hesitated when it came to murder.
Beauchamp then told Strong what he had in mind to do. It did not surprise him that his foreman was immediately receptive to it. Beauchamp had given his plan a lot of thought since his visit with the sheriff. His initial plan to simply massacre everyone on the McAllister spread, under the guise of a range war over cattle, had caused some concerns to arise. The report of a range war might possibly cause the army to send a troop in to investigate. He wanted to prevent that at all costs. Then Strong made a comment that gave him another idea.
“Too bad ol’ McAllister don’t have an Injun raid like that one that killed that family over on War Eagle Mountain last year,” he said with a smug grin on his face.
“By God,” Beauchamp exclaimed, “that might be the very thing to happen—an Indian massacre to wipe out the whole damn bunch of them.” He paused to recall the incident on War Eagle Mountain and think about it for a moment. “All for nothing, too. There wasn’t enough gold on that claim to bother with.”
“That’d sure ’nough be bad luck for poor ol’ Boone McAllister, wouldn’t it?” Strong commented with a chuckle, warming to the idea. “Hell, we’ve even got an Injun—ol’ Slow Sam. Leastways, he’s half Injun.” The man he referred to was wanted in Oklahoma Territory for the murder of a family of five. His name was Sam Slow Pony, but the men called him Slow Sam. “We could even dress up like Injuns,” Strong said, completely carried away by the novel idea of the murderous raid.
“There won’t be any need to, if you do the job right,” Beauchamp said. “There won’t be any witnesses to tell anyone who did it. You get the men together and get them ready to ride.” He hesitated a moment, wondering if McAllister had any more men coming. “Tomorrow night,” he decided. “That should give you any time you need to make your plans.” Strong got up to leave. “And, Mike, I’m holding you responsible to get the job done. There can’t be one person left alive on that mountain.”
“You don’t have to worry about that,” Strong assured him. “We’ll have the army out lookin’ for the Injun war party that done in them poor folks.”